The success, or failure, of the Budget Control Act's Joint Committee, which will have the resposibility to craft a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction package, will depend in large part on who is assigned to the committee.

Party leaders from both sides are facing pressure to pick party loyalists. Many Republicans don't want anyone appointed that will support revenue increases. Many Democrats don't want anyone appointed that will support reductions in the growth of entitlements. If party leaders appoint people who are unwilling to compromise, the committee will stalemate and no deal will be possible.

Here is a proposal that would help the party leaders, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell, avoid this situation: they could each agree to choose one person from the opposite party.

Each leader chooses three members. In this scenario, each would choose two from their own party and one person from the other party. So, Boehner and McConnell would each choose two Republicans and one Democrat, and Pelosi and Reid would each choose two Democrats and one Republican, for instance.

Since Boehner and McConnell would choose centrist Democrats, and Pelosi and Reid would choose centrist Republicans, at least four of the 12 member committee would be centrists and a compromise bill would most likely emerge from negotiations.

Congress would not have to do anything to make this happen. An agreement among all four leaders is all that would be needed to make this happen.

What do you think? Please let me know in the comments below.

Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Professor of Economics at Boston University, has devised a bipartisan health care reform plan--The Purple Health Plan. (Red and blue make purple, get it?) The plan would do away Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax deduction for employer provided health care. In its place, everyone would get a voucher for basic insurance coverage. The plan counts five Nobel Prize winning economists among its signers.

Frequent readers of this blog may recall that I made the exact same proposal over year ago with my own Proposal for Bipartisan Health Care Reform. I still recall how I came up with the idea. I was preparing to teach about health care to my Public Policy class at Marietta College and our nation was in the midst of a debate on health care reform. As Republicans and Democrats were both offering ideas on reform, and I was doing research on our current health care system, the following thoughts occurred to me:

• Three of the biggest drivers of our health care costs are Medicare, Medicaid, and employer subsidized health care. 
• We spend a lot of money on Medicare and Medicaid, which are grossly inefficient and contain a massive amount of fraud. And, a lot of revenue could be raised by doing away with the tax deduction for employer provided health care.
• The US government does simple programs well, such as Social Security, which is basically sending people a check each month. The US government does complicated programs poorly, such as Medicaid, which is basically running an insurance company. 
• Democrats mostly want universal coverage. Republicans mostly want to bring costs down through market based reforms. Can both sides get what they want?

Do We Need a Heath Care Mandate?

A Proposal for Bipartisan Health Care Reform 

Liberal versus Conservative health care policies 

I'm a big fan of Politifact and Factcheck.org. They provide an important public service. But sometimes I find some of their scoring decisions strange, especially with categories like "half-true", "mostly true", and "mostly false". Recently, for instance, Politifact rated Michele Bachmann "false" for stating that the top 1% of wage earners pay 40% of federal taxes, and Obama "half-true"  for stating that incomes rose for the top 1% of wage earners and dropped for everyone else. Both statements are false, but could be considered true if you make assumptions about what they really meant by their statements. In an email to Politifact, I wrote,

Regarding: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/14/barack-obama/obama-says-incomes-increased-more-250000-top-1-per/

You give Obama a "half-true", for a statement that you acknowledge is false. Apparently, the "half-true" comes after making a bunch of assumptions that he didn't say.

Now look at this one: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/18/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-says-top-1-percent-pay-40-percent/

Bachmann also made a false statement, and you label it as such. But, if you assume she meant federal income taxes, it would be true. So, why not "half-true"?

I suggest some consistency. Either they are both "half-true", or both "false". Otherwise, it appears you are willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but not Bachmann.

Trust funds have no particular economic significance. They do not hold separate cash balances; instead they function primarily as accounting mechanisms to track receipts and spending for programs that have specific taxes or other revenues earmarked for their use.

The media suffered the loss of one of its best journalists yesterday. David Broder wrote opinion editorials for the Washington Post, was a frequent guest on political news programs such as Meet the Press, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorials during the Watergate Scandal.

Broder's writing was known for its clarity, and his ability to engage questions larger than the hot topic of the day. He was a consumer of political science research and brought some of what he gleaned from these studies to his writing.

Even though a liberal Democrat, Broder did not shy away from criticizing democratic leaders. For instance, in 2007 he criticized Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for killing an effort to withdraw troops from Iraq because, by Reid's estimation, it would benefit Democrats in the next election to do so. And more recently, he criticized President Obama for missing an opportunity in his recent State of the Union Address to tackle tax reform.

Rest in peace, Mr. Broder. You will be missed.

With no obvious front runner, it is difficult to predict who the GOP will nominate to run against President Obama. Here is Learning About Politics' grades among 7 characteristics that will be important for the eventual nominee. Primary election voters take into account viability (can they win the nomination), electability (can they win the election), likability (how much they like them), and experience (do they have a presidential-ready resume?). Also, voters are less likely to vote for someone if they don't recognize their name, so name recognition is necessary. We have also included likability and name recognition in the general election. The scores are an average of the scores from all four of us on a 1-5 scale, with a 5 representing the highest.




Overall, we gave Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, and Tim Pawlenty the best chance of winning the nomination. Romney and Pawlenty (along with Mitch Daniels) also scored the highest on their chances to win the general election. Our scores also suggest that Huntsman will be challenged by his lack of name recognition, and Donald Trump and John Bolton by their lack of likability. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty scored the highest for their experience to be president, with Haley Barbour, John Huntsman, Mitch Daniels, and Newt Gingrich tied for third in that category. The most discussed potential candidate, Sarah Palin, only scored well in one category--name recognition.

Overall, there is not a lot of variance in the scores, with a couple of exceptions. There is wide disagreement on Newt Gingrich's viability. This is symbolic, perhaps, of Gingrich's enigmatic personality. He sometimes appears to be a level-headed pragmatist, such as when he works with Al Sharpton on education reform, and others times he appears to be a partisan rabble-rouser such as when he claimed that the health-care bill included "death panels" or that Sonia Sotomayor is a "reverse-racist". Napp and Shannon tend to favor senators in the experience column, while Matt and Kevin gave governors slightly higher marks. And, while Napp is high on Huntsman's experience, Matt, Kevin, and Shannon rated him average. 

You can see all of our individual scores here. How would you score the candidates? Which of our scores do you most disagree with? Leave your answers in our comment section below.

After President Obama introduced his budget to Congress last week (as he is required to do by law), he has been in a public debate with Republican leaders on federal spending. Obama's budget would freeze discretionary non-defense spending, makes cuts in some areas, raises spending in other areas. GOP leaders in Congress counter that Obama is not taking the deficit seriously enough because he wants to freeze spending at high levels (non-defense discretionary spending has increased over the last two years). Republicans are countering with their own budget cuts that would reduce overall non-defense, non-homeland security discretionary spending. Some Republicans, mostly representing the Tea Party, want to make cuts in the current year's budget as well.

This pitched battle over non-defense discretionary is, however, a smoke screen. Both sides want the public to believe that they are taking our national debt seriously, but they are avoiding the root causes of our current debt crisis. Here is the key point that Americans need to recognize: any plan to reduce our deficit that does not address Social Security, health care, and military spending is not a serious plan.

Take a look at this chart of federal spending for FY 2010 provided by the Concord Coalition. Social Security, health care, and defense comprise 65% of spending, while non-defense discretionary spending (education, environment, international affairs, and other) are only 11% of the budget.

Critics from both the right and left of the political spectrum have pointed out these failures by Obama and congressional Republicans. Here are a few samples:

"The more charitable interpretation of the president's decision not to tackle entitlement spending or the tax code is that the administration decided that leadership, in this case, was not good strategy." --Ruth Marcus, Washington Post  

"In this budget, in his [Obama's] refusal to do anything concrete to tackle the looming entitlement debt, in his failure to address the generational injustice, in his blithe indifference to the increasing danger of default, he has betrayed those of us who took him to be a serious president prepared to put the good of the country before his short term political interests. Like his State of the Union, this budget is good short term politics but such a massive pile of fiscal bullshit it makes it perfectly clear that Obama is kicking this vital issue down the road." --Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

"The classic test of whether politicians are serious about balancing the federal budget is whether they confine their suggestions to eliminating earmarks, foreign aid, and fraud, waste, and abuse. Politicians love to rail against these things because they're unpopular and therefore make attractive targets. But doing so is a dodge. All combined, they account for only a tiny fraction of federal spending, so doing away with them does little for the bottom line. Anyone who implies otherwise isn't being forthright about the problem or the possible solutions. But politicians have always gotten away with this because most voters don't know enough about the budget to realize they're being snowed." --Joshua Green, The Atlantic

"And now what this has become, I read, is a political strategy. The president is not talking about because he is waiting for the Republicans to talk about it. And our new, bold republicans we just sent to the House of Representatives aren't talking about it because they are waiting for him to talk about it. Let me suggest to you that my children's future and your children's future is more important than some political strategy. Let me suggest to you that what game is being played out here is irresponsible and it's dangerous. We need to say these things and we need to say them out loud- when we say we're cutting spending, when we say everything is on the table, when we say we mean entitlement programs we should be specific. 

And let me tell you what the truth is. What's the truth that no one is talking about-here is the truth that no one is talking about: you're going to have to raise the retirement age for social security. Oh I just said it and I'm still standing here! I did not vaporize into the carpeting and I said it! We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going to bankrupt us. Once again lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it's not only bankrupting the federal government, it's bankrupting every state government. There you go. If we're not honest about these things, on the state level about pensions and benefits and on the federal level about social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, we are on the path to ruin." --Governor Chris Christie, speech at the American Enterprise Institute

"No one can reasonably claim that the budget crisis exists because America spends too much on bed nets and AIDS drugs. Our massive debt is mainly caused by a combination of entitlement commitments, an aging population and health cost inflation. Claiming courage or credit for irrelevant cuts in foreign assistance is a net subtraction from public seriousness on the deficit." --Michael Gerson, Washington Post

"Over the next few weeks, Republicans will try to cut discretionary spending to 2008 levels and tell their constituents they are boldly reducing the size of government. That is a mirage. Anybody who doesn’t take on entitlement spending is an enabler of big government. The supposedly rabid Republican freshmen are actually big government conservatives. They will cut programs that do measurable good while doing little to solve our long-range fiscal crisis." --David Brooks, The New York Times

Public Opinion on Deficit Reduction

Thoughts on the Bowles-Simpson Debt Commission Report

The Difference Between the Deficit and the Debt

In an opinion editorial for the Columbus Dispatch on May 22, 2010, I argued that Republicans should support changing Senate rules to disallow filibusters. When the new Senate convenes on Monday, Democrats will still be the majority party. With a much slimmer margin, however, will they still try to change the Senate rules?

During the health care debate, liberal columnists, bloggers, and interest groups advocated changing Senate rules to limit use of the filibuster. These politicos grew frustrated at Republican senators' ability to block, frustrate, and tame the agenda laid out by President Obama in his 2008 campaign. Reasonably, therefore, Democrats began to question the wisdom of Rule 22, the Senate rule that allows filibusters by requiring 60 votes to end debate on a bill.

Paul Krugman, in a February 7, 2010 editorial for the New York Times, argued that “the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government;” therefore, Senators should “recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster.” Ezra Klein, writing for Newsweek on March 27, 2010, decided that Rule 22 is “no longer appropriate given the polarizing realities of our politics.” Liberal blogs ProgressiveCongress.org, CredoAction.com, ActBlue.com, and DailyKos.com have all taken up the cause of filibuster reform. You can go to their websites and sign a petition calling for reform.

Tom Udall (D-NM) has led the charge for filibuster reform in the Senate with committee hearings on the topic. He also has Tom Harkin on his side, who last tried to change the filibuster rules, along with Joe Lieberman, in 1995 while Democrats were in the minority. Dick Durbin and Carl Levin are also rumored to support reform.

Harry Reid, who had opposed any changes to the filibuster when Republicans wanted to ban its use for judicial confirmations, said in a March 10, 2010 press conference, Democrats are “going to take a look at the filibuster,” and, “we are likely to have to make some changes in it, because the Republicans have abused that....” Would Reid still support changes to the filibuster if Democrats were in a position to abuse it?

In an strange twist, Jack Conway, the Democrat's US Senate nominee in Kentucky, had a campaign ad asking, “can you imagine adding Rand Paul to the 'party of no'? We need filibuster reform.” Did he want you to vote for him, or support filibuster reform because he expected his opponent to win? If Conway had won, would he still support reform, or would he think it unnecessary without Paul in the Senate?

Some liberals, such as Jennifer Rubin at The Washington Post, have suggested that the filibuster should remain to stop legislation that liberals would not like. This type of short-sighted thinking makes filibuster reform difficult. Senators should consider what is best for the Senate in the long term, not what is best for their party in the short term.

Democrats are correct to support changing Rule 22. By empowering every Senator with the ability to stall or halt legislation, Rule 22 has made the Senate dysfunctional. Hopefully, Democratic defeats in the 2010 elections will not dissuade them from pursuing reform.  

Related Posts:

Guest Post: Where do Florida Senate Candidates Stand on Senate Filibusters? 

Suite101.com: Why Don't US Senators Filibuster Anymore?

The Census results are finally in! These results mean we can see how many U.S. House of Representatives members will be gained or lost by the states. It also tells us which states gain or lose Electoral College members.

Here are the states that lose or gain House seats by redistricting.

States that lost 2 each: New York, Ohio
States that lost 1 each: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Pennsylvania

States that gained 1 each: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, Washington
State that gained 2: Florida
State that gained 4: Texas

One thing that is useful when guesstimating who is going to win and who is going to lose is to look at who controls the state legislature. If the Republicans control the state legislature, they will likely redistrict the state to maximize wins for their party as well as losses for the Democrats.

If I use the 2010 election results....

Which state legislatures that gain or lose are controlled by Democrats?

New York, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Nevada, Washington

Which state legislatures that gain or lose are controlled by Republicans?

Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah, Florida, Texas

Which state legislature has split control?

Louisiana


It should not come as a surprise that most of the states that lost seats (MI, OH, NY, MA, PA, IL, MO, IA) are all North of the 36°30′ parallel. If you don’t know the line, think Kentucky/Tennessee borderline. If you look at a map of the USA, that parallel marks the lower border for VA, KY, KS, CO, UT, and mostly MO except for the dangling bit. It was also the Missouri Compromise borderline for westward expansion of slavery.

In a more colloquial way, here's the deal... the North is losing people, and the South and West are gaining people. Your major exception is Louisiana, but the lingering effects of Hurricane Katrina are likely the source of the population loss for Census 2010.

So… what do these results mean in terms of political parties?


States the Republicans Should be Happy about.

• Ohio. Ohio has Republican Party control in the State legislature. The state went for Obama in 2008, but it was a close swing state with only a 4.6% difference between the two parties. The current U.S. House distribution for the state is 5 Democrats and 13 Republicans. Ohio is losing 2 seats, and with Republican dominated redistricting, I’ll guessing the Democratic Party will lose them leaving them with only 3 Democratic members of the U.S. House.
  
• Massachusetts. Sure, Massachusetts is a solid Democratic Party state at the moment. They also have zero Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. The seat the state loses is going to be Democratic Party seat. I predict there will be a lot of infighting among Democrats for which member is going to fall on their sword. The Republicans win one here without much work because the Democratic Party is going to lose a seat no matter what.
  
• Missouri. It lost a seat, but this state was an extremely close swing state in 2008 with the presidential margin of victory less than 1%. They have a Republican controlled state legislature and the U.S. House seats are 3 Democratic and 6 Republican. One Democratic Party House member is probably going to get their seat taken away so this can be considered a potential win for the Republicans.
  
• Michigan. The state legislature is under Republican Party control and the state voted for Obama in 2008. The current U.S. House seats in Michigan are 6 Democrats and 9 Republicans. Republicans are likely going to strip out a Democratic Party U.S. House seat when they redistrict to lose one seat.
  
• Pennsylvania. See Michigan. Rinse. Repeat. (though they have 7 Democrats and 12 Republicans in the House)
  
• Arizona, Georgia, Utah, South Carolina, Texas. The Republican Party gained seats in all these states. They also control the state legislatures and their states all voted for McCain in 2008. The 8 new electoral college seats they got (4 to Texas alone) will all probably be redistricted towards Republicans.
  Predictions: These states get more interesting if they decide to dig in and strip out existing Democratic Party seats in favor of more Republican Party leaning ones. The current rumor for Austin, Texas is that it will be re-cracked again in an attempt to unseat Lloyd Doggett who survived a similar effort in 2003 by the state legislature. Arizona, Georgia and Texas are the most likely targets for redistricting to lose existing Democratic Party seats. Utah and South Carolina only have 1 Democratic Party member each per state in the U.S. House so they may be more difficult to remove, though not impossible.
  
• Florida. Florida is gaining 2 House members. They narrowly went for Obama in 2008 and they have a Republican controlled state legislature. My guess is the Republicans are going to go for the jugular in Florida and attempt to remove as many Democratic Party seats as possible during redistricting. Currently, Florida has 6 Democrats and 19 Republicans in the U.S. House. With substantial, but different minority populations in both in the North and South (Jacksonville/Miami), it will be interesting to see how the lines are drawn.

• Nevada and Washington. Both states pick up a seat and have Democratic Party controlled state legislatures. They should probably be redistricted in favor of Democrats.
  

1. Shellacking: Obama's description of what Republicans did to Democrats in the 2010 elections.

2. Big F---ing Deal: Joe Biden's explains to Obama the significance of passing the health care reform bill. 

3.  Aqua Buddha: Jack Conway's version of "jumping the shark"; Voters were turned off by his desperate attempt to woo religious voters away from Rand Paul with this campaign ad.

4.  Man Up: Female candidates questioning the masculinity of their male opponents was a popular tactic in 2010.

5.  Small Business: In 2010, big businesses were the cause of all our nation's woes, while small businesses were going to be our saviors. Politicians of both parties seemed to agree on this. Yet, there is no common definition of "small business", and those medium businesses got left out of the discussion altogether. 

There is a great deal I don’t like about the health care bill. My primary concern is that it does far too little to control costs. As a result, it will end up creating yet another strain on our national budget and increase the already sizable budget deficit.

Ironically, despite a surplus of dubious provisions in the bill to question, the opposition is focused on the mandate that Americans buy health insurance. That was the provision struck down by a conservative federal judge this month. Ironically, the mandate is one of the more conservative and reasonable elements of an otherwise largely inaccessible piece of legislation. The fact that the GOP is opposed to the mandate suggests just how far the party has moved from conservative economic principles.

Consider the state of the current health care system. As it exists today, everyone with insurance pays to cover the uninsured. You don’t actually see that tax; it is applied in the costs of insurance and medical care. If a person without insurance is injured or sick, they go to an emergency room where they are treated, and the hospital covers the cost by increasing the charges to the insured population or from the taxpayers through a government program.

The current system is not only forcing the insured to pay for the uninsured, but it is remarkably expensive as it pays for health care at the emergency room, which is one of the most expensive points of delivery. Since we already have decided as a society that we will not allow people to be refused immediate medical treatment for lack of money, then we must figure out how to treat them in a way that is both evenhanded and efficient.

The preferred solution from more liberal quarters is a national health care system in which everyone is covered. This approach would be supported through a combination of premiums and taxes. A socialized approach to medicine like this is the favored method in much of Europe and Canada. As is evidenced by the debates in the last year, Americans have strong feelings both for and against this approach to health care.

The mandates are the conservative answer to the coverage problem based on private insurance purchased in a free market. It was proposed by Republican lawmakers in 1993 in response to then President Clinton’s healthcare plan. Mitt Romney used it as the centerpiece of his healthcare proposal naming it a personal responsibility principle while calling for the end of free riding on the government.

A mandate requires that everyone pay their own way by buying insurance. Those that fail to do so, pay a tax so that other taxpayers are not solely responsible for their care should they need it. To aid this, the bill creates a health care exchange for the purchase of private health policies. As the poor may not be able to pay the entire cost of insurance, the government helps subsidize their purchase. While not ideal, it does force people to be responsible for their own care and help redirect people from the expensive emergency rooms to doctors and clinics for primary care. Most importantly, it prevents those who could cover themselves from freeloading off of the taxpayers and the insured.

Conservatism is about doing for yourself, instead of having government do for you. It is about personal responsibility. A system that expects someone else to pay for another’s risky health choices is indefensible from either the left or the right. Yet, in striking down the mandate, we are returning to an extremely expensive, unsustainable system where the costs are almost entirely on the insured and hidden in high premiums. In rejecting the mandate to buy insurance, we are rejecting a private solution to the problem, and setting the groundwork for a large public one.

• Cut $200 billion in discretionary spending by 2015.
• Half of which, $100 billion, will be from the Department of Defense's budget.
• Raise the retirement age for Social Security.
• Reduce the growth in Social Security payments. (It is currently indexed to wages.)
• Simplify the tax code by doing away with many deductions, such as the home-mortgage interest deduction and employer provided health care.
• Abolish many farm subsidies.
• Cut Medicare spending.
• Increase the gas tax by 15 cents per gallon.

On election night last week we heard a great deal about the results from various exit polls that showed independents were breaking for the Republican Party and that people were frustrated with the lack of economic growth over the last two years. If you watched the election night coverage on any of the major cable news stations I’m sure you noticed the various people whose job it was simply to breakdown the exit poll results. Of course reporting the results of the exit polls isn’t exciting enough so many times there would be some enhanced 3D graphic or futuristic computer screen to jazz-up these results. However, many first-time or casual viewers of politics were probably left wondering what an exit poll even is.

At the most basic level, an exit poll is no different than any other poll except that it is taken immediately after voters leave their polling station. The intent of the exit poll is to determine who is turning out to vote on Election Day and whether the vote is breaking in favor of a particular candidate or political party. Just as in pre-election polls, researchers attempt to ensure they are getting a representative sample of voters, but no sample is ever perfect so there will always be a margin of error. Additionally, there has been a trend in recent years that many exit polls systematically “tilt” in one direction in which the polls will inaccurately favor either the Republican or Democratic candidate. The way in which the media utilizes the results from the exit polls often creates an even larger problem, which will be the topic of a future blog post.

Despite some of the issues with exit polls they are a fascinating source of data for those of us who try to figure out what happened on election night and why it happened. What I wanted to do for the remainder of this post is to breakdown a couple of interesting results from the national exit polls that were not covered too extensively in the media.

- White people like to vote: Much is made of the increasing political significance of racial and ethnic minorities in American politics. However, a quick glance of the exit polls confirmed that White-Caucasians consisted of 78% of the electorate on election night. That is an overwhelming percentage when you realize that White-Caucasians only consist of 64% of the overall population. Additionally, White-Caucasians voted at a 60-40 clip in favor of the Republican Party.

- Latinos continue to stay at home: On the opposite side of the spectrum Latinos had a very poor night in terms of voter turnout. According to the exit polls, Latinos consisted of 8% of the electorate on election night, despite consisting of around 16% of the overall population. Amongst the Latinos that did turn out to vote, they favored the Democratic Party at a nearly 2-to-1 rate. If Democrats seek to hold onto the presidency in 2012 they will have to do a better job at mobilizing Latinos since they are a substantial portion of the population in large Electoral College states such as Texas, California, New York, and Florida. Latinos are also a critical portion of the electorate in swing states such as Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Pennsylvania.

- Catholics like to swing: In 2008, White Catholics split nearly 50-50 between Obama and McCain (with a slight edge to McCain), but in this election White Catholics came out hard in favor of Republican candidates at nearly a 60-40 rate. Catholics have proven to be consistent swing-voters from one election to another since they are often torn between the foreign affairs policies of the Democratic Party and the pro-life abortion policy of the Republican Party. Getting Catholics to swing back toward the Democratic Party is going to be critical in 2012 if Obama wants to keep states like Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in the “blue” column.

- Gay people can be Republicans too: It is important to note that sexual orientation is a tricky subject in exit polls since there are many cases where people may not feel comfortable admitting their sexuality in a face-to-face setting. However, amongst those individuals who admitted to being GLB (gay, lesbian, bisexual), 30% of them voted Republican. This statistic surprised some people because of the very public anti-gay marriage stance that many Republican lawmakers have taken over the past decade, but it shouldn’t surprise us at all. When it comes to politics, Gay-Americans are not constantly thinking about their sexuality. They are subject to the same economic pressures as everyone else in society and believing in small government is not something that is influenced by sexual orientation. This statistic should remind us not to paint various groups with too broad of a brush stroke when it comes to electoral politics.

- Voting for your enemy: One of the themes that emerged on election night was the fact that the public did not have a very high opinion of either political party. Over 50% of the voting public had an unfavorable view toward both the Republican and Democratic parties. However, the Republican Party was able to emerge victorious on election night because of the number of people who still voted for them despite having an unfavorable view of their party. Of the 53% of the public who said they had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party, nearly one-quarter of them still casted a ballot supporting the GOP.

These were just some of the interesting exit poll numbers that really stuck out to me. I hope you enjoyed taking a deeper look at the exit polls and I encourage you to share other results that may have jumped out at you.

In my last post, I was cheerleading about the importance of state legislature elections. I decided to continue the theme and provide some analysis on the November 2 election.
The state legislatures elected on Tuesday night will be the ones responsible for redistricting when the 2010 Census numbers are released. The party controlling the legislature will have a hand in shaping the House of Representatives districts for the next 10 years.


I used this link as the guide for the states that are poised to gain and lose seats following the release of the census data.


Which state legislatures retained Republican control following the November 2, 2010 election?AZ FL GA ID KS MO ND OK SC SD TN TX UT WY


Which state legislatures shifted control from at least a partial Democratic Party controlled state legislature to full Republican Party control? AL IN IA ME MI MN MT NH NC OH PA WI

Which state legislatures are under Democratic Party control after the November 2 election? AR CA CT DE HI MD MA NV NM RI VT WA WV (plus NJ and LA but they didn't have elections on Nov 2)

Who's controlling what?

The Republican Party will control eleven state legislatures (AZ FL GA IA MI MN OH PA SC TX UT) that will probably gain (the ones indicated in bold) or lose seats during redistricting.

The Democratic Party will control six state legislatures (IL LA MA NJ NV WA) that will probably gain (the ones indicated in bold) or lose seats during redistricting.

By counting the seats, the Republican Party controlled state legislatures are set to gain power of redistricting 9 new House seats in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Utah. The remaining states are likely going to lose a total of six seats to redistricting.

What about the Democratic Party controlled state legislatures? They are going to gain redistricting over two new House seats in Nevada and Washington. They are likely to lose four seats to redistricting in the remaining states.

Presidential Swing States

If you are still awake and haven't nodded off from the large lists of states yet, the last interesting tidbit of information I was to add is about the 2008 presidential swing states. A swing state is one that was won or lost with 5% or less of the overall total vote.

Which of these states set to redistrict their U.S. House seats were swing states in 2008? FL IN MO MT NC OH (I'm using this link to determine these states)

Were any of these swing states carried by Obama in 2008? Yep. FL IN NC OH

Here's where this gets interesting. Of these four swing states, they are now all under full Republican Party control in their state legislatures. Before November 2, only Florida was under full Republican control. The other three had at least one of their chambers controlled by the Democratic Party.

How many of the 2008 swing states have Democratic Party controlled state legislatures? Zero.


Conclusions?

The Republican Party was a big winner on Tuesday. They solidified control in many state legislatures as well as gained it in many others. They won the majority of state legislatures that will control states adding to their U.S. House delegations when the census is released next year. In addition, they won control in swing states where they can work to build party support through state party connections.

I'll likely leave the U.S. House and U.S. Senate analysis to my other colleagues on this board. However, by looking at the state legislatures, I'd bet on the Republican Party using redistricting to reinforce Republican control over U.S. House seats to help extend their majority control over the chamber for the next several years at least.

Below you'll find my first contribution to this blog. I try to explain what we saw on election night and what it means moving forward for the GOP and the Tea Party. I hope you enjoy!!

It's time to call in God. It's time to unleash God. You know the discipline of fasting and prayer, when you put it together is so powerful, and it's like I said earlier, when you put them both together, it seems like God leans a little bit closer to you, and you're saying to Him, "I'm not gonna let go until you listen to me." Now we've done just about everything and they're not listening. It's time to sic God on 'em. And that's the reason for the fast.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. (Isaiah 40:28, NIV)

David Brooks' recent editorial addresses some of the issues raised by the "Call for Intergenerational Justice," the topic of my previous 2 posts. He notes that Americans today are more self-confident than previous generations and place much emphasis upon their own self-importance. "In short, there’s abundant evidence to suggest that we have shifted a bit from a culture that emphasized self-effacement — I’m no better than anybody else, but nobody is better than me — to a culture that emphasizes self-expansion."

Brooks also wonders if this attitude shift contributes to the debt we have accumulated and why we are having trouble getting that debt under control.

Most pervasively, I wonder if there is a link between a possible magnification of self and a declining saliency of the virtues associated with citizenship.

Citizenship, after all, is built on an awareness that we are not all that special but are, instead, enmeshed in a common enterprise. Our lives are given meaning by the service we supply to the nation. I wonder if Americans are unwilling to support the sacrifices that will be required to avert fiscal catastrophe in part because they are less conscious of themselves as components of a national project.

Perhaps the enlargement of the self has also attenuated the links between the generations. Every generation has an incentive to push costs of current spending onto future generations. But no generation has done it as freely as this one. Maybe people in the past had a visceral sense of themselves as a small piece of a larger chain across the centuries. As a result, it felt viscerally wrong to privilege the current generation over the future ones, in a way it no longer does.

These religious groups’ focus on government’s role in ameliorating poverty, however, leaves largely unaddressed the real core of the problem, and the necessary steps to address it.

This means that the fundamental role of government in the provision of various services must likewise be explored. This requires a return to basics, the first principles of good governance, that does justice to the varieties of governmental entities (local, regional, state, federal) and institutions of civil society (including families, churches, charities, and businesses). We must ask ourselves: What is government for? What is the federal government for? Is the government primarily and essentially a means of upholding civil order by the application of retributive justice? Are civil magistrates “God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (Ro 13:4 NIV)? Or are they primarily to be agents of the redistribution of wealth, to take from the rich and give to the poor?

The 'What Would Jesus Cut?' and 'A Call for Intergenerational Justice' campaigns want to make particular social programs immune from these calculations. But the government’s fiscal straits are so dire that no program or area of spending can be privileged thus.

I've recently signed onto a statement put together by the Center for Public Justice and Evangelicals for Social Action titled A Call for Intergenerational Justice: A Christian Proposal for the American Debt Crisis. The statement points to the immorality of passing our large national debt onto our children and children's children. It states, 

Today’s federal debts threaten not only the present generation, but also our children and generations yet unborn. Intergenerational justice demands that one generation must not benefit or suffer unfairly at the cost of another.